In the early dark hours on Friday, Maverick had dipped his toe into the waters of hope.
Just before wake-up, he rose from his bunk and pissed, then stretched his stiff limbs until he could move. When he was loose enough to function, he gathered his bathroom gear and waited. He completed his morning routine exactly the same way he’d done it for the past one thousand, four hundred, and thirty-five days: wake, piss, stretch out, wait for first count, shower, dress, back to his cell to put his gear away and wait to be called for mess.
He hadn’t had a cellmate for a couple of months, since the last one had hung himself in the cell while Maverick had spent a night in the infirmary after a fight. He didn’t even remember his name, but he’d been a pimply kid, still in his teens, rung up for vehicular manslaughter. He’d been drunk and had slammed headlong into an oncoming car and killed a mom and three little kids, including a three-month-old baby.
Those eight days in gen pop had not been kind to him.
When Evans called his block for mess, Maverick left his cell to head to breakfast, as he had every morning for almost four years, but the guard blocked his way.
“Back to your cell, inmate. You wait until you’re called.”
He felt a strange tickle in his belly and didn’t understand what it was until he was back in his cell. He was nervous. That was what hope brought you: if you let yourself think you could have something worth having, then you had to contend with the fear that you might lose it, or never get it at all.
He sat and waited in his cell for hours, while the drab routines of prison life went on around him and without him. Never had he felt lonelier than in those hours of limbo. He was like that cat he’d learned about in physics class back in high school—the one who was both alive and dead, who existed and didn’t exist simultaneously.
The rest of the inmates were at lunch when Kohn, one of the guards, came by and tossed a cardboard box at him. Maverick caught it out of reflex. It was empty.
“Pack up, inmate. Five minutes.” He stood in the open cell door, and Maverick understood he was to pack right then, while Kohn watched.
Another inmate, one more comfortable with the concepts of faith and hope, might have used the hours of idleness to prepare his belongings for packing, but Maverick had only sat and let the clock tick away. He’d been afraid to dip his toe back into that pool of hope.
He didn’t have much to pack, anyway, so three minutes was sufficient time to shove his few things, mostly toiletries and a few books from Mo’s annual Christmas package, into the box.
When he was done, Kohn led him out of the cell. The thought that he was leaving that forlorn home for good pushed against the door of Maverick’s brain, but he leaned on it and didn’t let it in. Not yet. Until he was on the other side of the fence, it was better to be prepared for this to be an elaborate ruse.
He was brought to the warden’s office, relieved of his box, and searched. Inside the office, he sat in the vinyl chair in front of the desk and listened while the warden explained that he had seventy-two hours to register with his probation officer. He was given the contact information he needed to do that, and then the warden pushed a piece of paper at him and told him to sign. He didn’t bother to read more than the heading: STATE OF OKLAHOMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. PRISONER RELEASE.
Release. Prisoner release. He signed his name with a hand that shook.
And then the warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, who’d overseen Maverick’s four years of despair, stood and stretched his arm across his desk, offering his hand.
“Don’t want to see you in here again, son,” he said, with a serious smile on his face.
Not knowing what else to do, Maverick nodded and shook the man’s hand.
~oOo~
An hour later, dressed in clothes he hadn’t worn in four years—the jeans were too big and the t-shirt too tight—he walked outside, still surrounded by high fence and razor wire and accompanied by Kohn. But at the end of the chute, in a gravel space across the road, he saw the sun-glinted chrome dazzle of motorcycles.
Kohn opened the final lock. He held the gate open, and Maverick, without a nod or a word or a look back, stepped through.
He was on the other side of the fence, and damn if it didn’t smell different. Look different. Feel different.
The Bulls—the whole club, by the looks of it, including men he didn’t know—crossed the road and met him. As Brian Delaney, the club president, held out his arms, Maverick dropped his box and accepted the embrace of his president.
“Damn, it’s good to have you back, brother,” Delaney said at his ear.
His feelings about Delaney had grown complicated over these past four years. He didn’t like some of the choices he’d made—those he knew about—and the direction he’d taken the club, and he didn’t like that the president had seemed to forget about him unless there was work that needed to be done inside.
He didn’t like that most of the Bulls had seemed to forget him inside. But he hadn’t been touched with affection in four years, and in that moment, he realized how desperately he’d needed it. Delaney’s warm, sincere embrace was a balm. It gave him new strength. The rush of freedom filled his blood, and he thought he could forgive grudges and grievances he’d been nurturing for four years. He loved his brothers. He was a Bull, first and last. And it wasn’t the club’s fault he’d been inside.
“It’s good to be back, D. So damn good.” Maverick swallowed back the emotion that filled his throat and stunted his words.
When Delaney released him, he expected Dane, their VP, to be next in line, but it was Gunner, holding out Maverick’s kutte, draped over his arms like a ceremonial offering.
In some ways, Gunner felt like Maverick’s own kid. That was ridiculous; Gunner was only five years younger than he. But the kid was a mess, and Maverick had felt protective of him from the first night they’d met. He’d brought him into the Bulls because he thought his skills were useful, and also because he thought the club would give him some structure and an outlet, a way to make his self-destructive tendencies constructive. He’d gone inside less than a year after Gunner had earned his patch, but from a distance, he’d seen enough to know he’d been right.
He also knew, because he saw Gunner fairly regularly, that things were settling down and looking up for the kid. He had himself an old lady, and he seemed centered and happy. And not so much a kid anymore.
“My man,” Maverick said, feeling a grin spread his stiff cheeks for the first time.
Gunner grinned back and held up the kutte on his arms. “Brother. This is for you.”
Maverick took the kutte from his friend. Someone—had to be Gunner—had polished the pebbled leather to a soft, fine sheen, and the sun had warmed it so that it felt like comfort in his hands. Before he put it on, he held it to his face and breathed deep.
God.
He brushed his fingers over his name. He held it up so that he could see the Brazen Bull across the back. Feeling emotion rush up and fill his throat again, he coughed and swung the leather over his shoulders, shrugging his arms into it. Heavy familiarity settled onto his back, and he could almost feel his muscles swell.
“Goddamn,” he muttered, and he grabbed Gunner and held the fuck on.
He was out. He was out. He was really out.
His life was almost within his reach again.
He and Gunner embraced until Delaney hooked a hand on Maverick’s shoulder. “Let’s get you the fuck away from his hellhole, Mav. Let’s get you home.”
He stepped away from Gunner, and the rest of his brothers, those he knew and those he didn’t, took their turns welcoming him back to the world. He learned that the men he didn’t know were Apollo and the prospects, Slick and Wally. Griffin, who’d been a prospect when he’d gone in, was a full-fledged patch now.
After he had back-slapping hugs from them all, they cleared a path so that he could see his Harley—his beautiful, sleek, black FXS Low Rider—parked across the road, shinin
g in the sun.
He was out. He was free.
~oOo~
The Brazen Bulls’ neighborhood looked almost exactly the same as the last time he’d seen it. A few of the storefronts had changed, and the church on the corner at the opposite end of the block, the Glory to the Savior Fellowship, had gotten a fresh coat of paint and a new (though still lettered by hand and not very well) sign, but otherwise, it was perfectly familiar.
Sorry for the glorious ride up from McAlester to end, Maverick pulled into the Bulls’ lot, followed by his brothers. As they parked their bikes, a line of women came from the back. Mo, Delaney’s wife and the queen of the clubhouse, had the lead.
“Hello, love.” She smiled and held up her arms, and Maverick gave her a tight squeeze. Shit, it felt good to hold a woman again, even a woman who was more mother to him than anything. When his body stirred at the touch of her breasts on his chest, he stepped back.
“Missed you.” He kissed Mo’s cheek.
“And we all missed you,” Joanna, Dane’s wife, said, and came in for a hug of her own. This time, Maverick kept some distance between their bodies.
He hugged Maddie, Ox’s old lady, and he met Willa and Leah, old ladies to Rad and Gunner. Willa stepped up for a friendly hug. Leah held back a little, looking up at him with a shy smile. She was a young one. He’d known that; Gunner had told him she was younger—like twenty, maybe?—but it was still a bit of a shock to see such a fresh, innocent face in a place like this.
He held out his hand. “Hey, Leah. Good to meet you. I hear you take good care of my brother.”
She set a slim hand in his. When he closed his fingers around hers, she squeezed back, showing strength. “I try to. He takes better care of me, I think.”
Maverick turned to Gunner and hooked his arm around his neck, pulling him close. “That’s good to hear. Knew he’d turn out good eventually.”
“Fuck you, Mav,” Gunner laughed and put an elbow in his chest.
“We’ve a house full of people waiting to welcome you home, love,” Mo said and hooked her arm through his. “And a line of girls waiting to ease your aches and show you some love.”
Maverick let Mo lead him into the clubhouse. He tried to be excited about the party that awaited him. He tried to be glad to be home. And he was. Fuck, he was glad to be here. But this wasn’t the home he needed right now, and the girls inside weren’t the love he needed.
He needed what he’d had four years ago. He needed Jenny and his daughter. He needed his family.
~oOo~
A few hours later, as a hot dusk settled over the neighborhood, Maverick sat on a battered old sofa on the patio. He was nursing a beer and had sent off the girl who’d attached herself to him—Kymber or Timber, he wasn’t quite sure—to have a minute of peace and quiet.
After the rigid routines of prison life, the clamor of the clubhouse had already worn on him. The loud music, the laughter, the drugs and booze, the practically naked women—his brain and body couldn’t take much more.
For all the familiarity of the neighborhood, the clubhouse itself had been a bit of a shock. Mo had been tearing through the place, redecorating and remodeling, and the only rooms that still looked entirely like he remembered were the kitchen—which she was apparently agitated to work on next—and the chapel, which Delaney had forbidden her to touch.
Going through the clubhouse, Maverick had had the feeling of coming home to a place he hadn’t remembered correctly. Everything was almost right, and nothing was exactly right.
Jenny wasn’t here. He’d known she wouldn’t be. She’d cut him out the day he’d been sentenced, and there was no reason to believe she knew or cared that he’d been released.
But in those dark hours of his last night in his cell, when he’d let himself think about freedom, a tiny image, fed by the frailest capillary of hope, had floated in his mind: walking into the clubhouse, seeing Jenny sitting at the bar, watching her turn and see him, watching the anger he’d last seen on her beautiful, heart-shaped face fade out, seeing the love he’d known come back. In his fantasy, she’d produced a pretty little girl from behind her back, a little girl with butterscotch hair, who’d run to him and said, “Daddy!”
And then Jenny, flowing into his arms.
That hadn’t happened, of course. Instead, he’d had a mortifyingly quick and unsatisfactory fuck with Timber-Kymber-Whoever, he’d gotten drunk on two shots of Jack and two beers, he’d puked his guts out, passed out for an hour, and now he was sitting alone, mostly sober, nursing a beer he wasn’t enjoying, and trying to figure out what the fuck his life would be now.
He was out. He was free. He should have been happy.
Kymber—he decided to go with that; it sounded more name-like—sashayed over on her high heels. She was carrying a beer, its chill made obvious by the condensation beading the brown glass. She leaned down, putting cleavage in his face, and reached for the beer in his hand, hanging forgotten off the end of the sofa.
“Looks like you need a refresh,” she simpered and took hold of his bottle.
Maverick reacted without thinking or understanding his own impulse. He yanked his hand back as if that warm, flat beer was the Holy Fucking Grail.
“Did I fucking say I wanted a refresh?”
It wasn’t until Kymber’s face registered real fear and she jumped back that Maverick realized how sharply he’d spoken. In his mental replay, he heard the menace and, shit, hate that had blazed out at this harmless chick.
The cold one dropped from her hand and shattered, and she dropped to the patio floor, crouching on those stupid shoes. “Sorry, I’m sorry, M-Mav. Oh shit, I’m sorry.”
Her frightened obeisance made Maverick truly angry, and he had to hold himself back from lashing out again. His most potent impulse was too knock her away. But he didn’t hurt women.
Jesus, prison had turned him into a fucking monster.
He got up and left the girl to her mess before he did something truly shitty.
~oOo~
“Hold up, Mav. I got your back.” Gunner trotted up as Maverick kicked his bike to life.
Maverick shook his head and raised his voice over the engine. “Don’t need a sitter, bro. Just need to ride.”
“You shouldn’t be on your own tonight.”
He’d been surrounded for the past four years—by people, by bars, by walls, by fences, by cameras, by guns. Even in solitary, he’d been surrounded. Crowded in. What he absolutely needed on this night was to be on his own, out in the world, with the wind in his face and the scent of freedom in his head.
“Go back to your lady, Gun. I’m good.”
~oOo~
He got on the highway, out of Tulsa, into the country, and rode for hours on narrow lanes twisting through woods and fields, rarely sharing the road with anyone. At first, and for a long time, his brain was nothing but noise, a cacophony of thoughts and feelings and memories that amounted to nonsense. Eventually, the road cleared all that out and let him think in a straight line, and he remembered that feeling. Four years had changed a lot, had made even familiar things different, but the feeling of finding his pitch on the road, that was exactly the same.
This was freedom. The ability to jump on his bike and ride until things made sense. Four years, he’d gone without a good mental cleansing. Four years of shit, really bad shit, pain and hate and anger and fear, loneliness and hopelessness and loss, piling up, gunking up his works, making his brain run choppy. He’d have to ride nonstop for the rest of his life to get everything back in working order.
He’d heard, from inmates landing back inside, usually on parole violations days or weeks after release, that it was impossible to go back to who you’d been before. Prison changed a man, broke him, made him somebody who couldn’t function in freedom anymore.
But if that were true, every ex-con would end up dead or back in. So the trick was to find a new way to be.
The Bulls had been a few years into outlaw work when he’d gone in, mostly f
reelance, just beginning to do some small jobs for the Russians and build that relationship. Now, they were managing all of the Volkov traffic into the southwest and the north, across half the country and beyond. Small club that they were, they were big league outlaws. Eighty percent of their work was dark work. The risk of landing inside on club business was exponentially more than it had been when Maverick had gone in on personal business.
Could he deal with that? He’d done near his full time, so he wasn’t on parole, but he was on supervised release for the next year. There would be a spotlight shining down on his head everywhere he went. Could he handle the possibility that he could land inside again? And be a repeat offender, with a sentence reflecting that?
He didn’t know. But he didn’t have a choice, either. He was a Bull. He loved his brothers, even the ones who’d forgotten him. And without the club, he had nothing.
A stoplight switched from yellow to red before him, and he braked and put his feet down. He was at the bottom of an exit ramp. The intersection was bright with light from the Mobil station on the corner, and Maverick realized where he was. Without consciously choosing to do so, he’d made his way back to Tulsa and was all the way to the east part of town.
He was four blocks from The Wayside Inn. Knowing that he absolutely should turn right and make his way back to the clubhouse, he turned left instead.
The neon light above the door was still on, but the street before the bar was empty. Maverick backed in at the curb and checked his watch. Fifteen minutes past last call. She’d probably locked the front door by now.
Then the door swung open, and two men came out. One paused, his shoulder still holding the door open, to light a fresh smoke. Maverick looked inside and saw a dim slice of an empty bar. And no Jenny standing there ready to lock up.
Maybe she wasn’t working tonight. She couldn’t possibly have managed the bar for its full schedule, so maybe somebody else was in charge tonight.
The customers sauntered down the sidewalk, and Maverick dismounted. He went to the door and yanked it open.
Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3) Page 4